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Just an FYI. MRSA can be contracted by ANYONE and has nothing to do with Tcell counts. You can get it with 10 Tcells or with 1000 Tcells. It is just a version of staph (which is EVERYWHERE) that is resistant to antibiotics.

As the poster said, anyone can get MRSA no matter what. It isn't confined to any one group. A person with a weakend immune system might have more difficulties with it, though. Perhaps certain activities can make you more likely to get it, I don't know. It is relatively common and doesn't seem to care who it hits.

MRSA is just a strain of Staph aureus that is more difficult to treat than regular Staph. Many people carry Staph aureus or even the MRSA type on their skin and on studies of health care workers, some were found to carry MRSA in the nose. Hand washing is a very important thing in a health care setting, which is one reason this is now a relatively common nosocomial infection because many health care workers just don't wash their hands like they should. That is why in many hospitals you see hand sanitizer stations everywhere and you see signs, "It is okay to as is of we have washed our hands." You just don't want another present from the hospital in addition to the large bill they will send you. Of course many things can make you get infections such as getting a cath, central line, etc. Just so many bacteria live on the skin, so it is easy to give them a chance to come in if you aren't careful or the person doesn't sanitize the area properly or clean it as they should.

We have been seeing it more and more common in the outpatient setting. This weekend when I was working, I isolated MRSA from the wound of a 6 year old girl. I have seen it in urine cultures, blood cultures, and a variety of other cultures from other sites, but more and more outpatients are showing up with it. It is becoming more common outside of the hospital instead of mainly in the hospital. There is another worse strain of Staph out there, which luckily is still rare. It is VRSA (Vancomycin resistant Staph aureus). Vanco is one drug that is used to treat a MRSA infection and so this type of staph is even worse than before.